The Green Building Finance & Investment Forum: First Movers, 9 Ideas & Some Challenges

 

So today is a two post day, just to stay on top of the info deluge that is besieging my inbox. I’d posted before about the Green Building Finance & Investment Forum, which took place the latter half of last week.

The focus of the conference was for the green first movers to share experiences from their particular vantage point.

Most Talked About Green Building Ideas

• Be green or be obsolete. You have heard this one here many times before. It was reiterated throughout every panel and presentation. Leanne Tobias used the term “future-proofing” to refer to how green is being seen as a way to mitigate the risk of obsolescence. It became one of the most repeated buzzwords throughout the event.

• Think abundance - apply sustainability to grow the top line. Tom Paladino gave a wonderful case study about how his firm uses sustainability to create specific features that increase the rent premium owners can get on their buildings. This runs contrary to most people’s focus on using green building principles to reduce expenses.

• Sustainable markets – the downtown premium. Jonathan Rose presented his company’s approach to investing, which includes focusing on smart growth locations. They’ve got it down to the point where they have established relative return premiums for various markets.

• LEED branding is gaining economic value. Transwestern’s Greg O’Brien pointed out that investors were seeing a particular value in green building being certified. It is not enough for an investor to just say that they had made specific improvements to the property, but that LEED certification was being seen as a ‘good housekeeping’ seal of approval on the asset.

• Think beyond the net zero building. On the technology and innovation panel, panelists talked about thinking in terms of a net zero community, not just individual buildings. Bill Sisson, of United Technologies and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and Laura Rodormer, of Swinerton Management Consulting talked about the need for the investment community to enlarge its view of how far we can go with net zero energy.

• Go for the low-hanging fruit. Immediately adopt low cost green strategies. Several panelists said that there were many high ROI green moves that can be immediately implemented at little or no cost (and without an investment committee’s approval). Changing lightbulbs might sound boring, but the energy savings generate a great return.

• Metrics measure what matters. Several investors pointed this out. We will not have positive financial, environmental and social outcomes unless we are measuring portfolio performance on all of these dimensions. Real estate investors now have the challenge to integrate measuring environmental and even some social outcomes within their portfolios alongside financial returns.

• Use government incentives, subsidies and tax breaks to your advantage. Steve Grant, of the Bond Companies, was in the audience.  He stood up in the middle of a presentation and pointed out how his company has gotten quite strategic about how they source and apply incentive dollars. It can be a significant source of financing that is often overlooked by investors.

• The green building tsunami is just beginning. State of California Treasurer Bill Lockyer commented that a year ago the investment officers at CalPERS and CalSTRS (our state pension funds) hardly ever heard about green building investments. Now they get about two proposals a week, requesting their investment in a new green fund.

And then there are still challenges

• Diagnosing with LEED-EB: Lots of investors talked about how implementing LEED for Existing Buildings is a very challenging, highly imperfect endeavor. Not only just to green a building, but they are also applying LEED-EB (now LEED-EBOM) as a screen for potential investments. No solutions were offered, this is an open point for all of us to follow. However, it was interesting to note that several
  consultants in the audience were muttering that the investors difficulties stemmed from trying to force LEED to fit their organization’s existing investment approach (i.e. put LEED criteria into the organization’s existing checklists) and not the other way around. There are lots of efforts underway throughout the industry trying to tackle this problem, so I’m sure we’ll see lots of movement here in the coming months.

• Underwriting, Appraisals & Standards: When it comes to talking about underwriting standards, the industry talk sounds like the City of Babel. Lots of confusion. We still lack formalized underwriting standards that the industry can apply in order to understand green buildings financially, but there are groups, such as the Green Building Finance Consortium, that will be putting out papers about this topic in the coming months. Tim Lowe also presented a detailed analysis of what needed to happen in order for real estate appraisers to adequately value green properties. In short, there is lots of education still needed within the appraisal industry.